But to-night Lucius had lost ken of the river, and knew himself to be a good ten miles from any tree that he or Geoffrey had ever hewn asunder. He stopped after about half-an-hour’s tramp; felt himself at fault; lighted his lantern, and looked about him. An impenetrable forest; a scene of darksome grandeur, gigantic pine-trees towering skyward, laden with snow; but over all a dreadful monotony, that made the picture gloomy as the shores of Acheron. Nor could Lucius discover any landmark whereby he might steer his course. He stopped for some minutes, his heart beating heavily. It was not the fear of peril to himself that tormented him. His mind—rarely a prey to selfish fears—was full of his dying friend. ‘To be away at such a time!’ he thought; ‘to have shared all the brightest hours of my youth with him, and not to be near him at the last!’ This was bitter. He pushed on desperately, muttering a brief prayer; telling himself that Heaven could not be so cruel as to sever him from the friend who was dear as a brother, who represented to him all he had ever known of brotherly love. He paused suddenly, startled by a sight so unexpected that his arm dropped nerveless, and his burden fell at his feet. A light in the thick forest; the welcome glare of a traveller’s fire. Not the far-spreading blaze of conflagration, the devouring flames stretching from tree to tree—a spectacle he had seen in the course of his wanderings—but the steady light of a mighty fire of heaped-up pine-logs; a fire to keep wolves and grisly bears at bay, and to defy the blighting presence of the frost-fiend himself. Lucius resumed his burden, and made straight for the fire. A wide and deep circle, making a kind of basin, had been dug out of the snow. In the centre burned a huge fire, and before it a man lay on his stomach, his chin resting on his folded arms, lazily watching the blazing logs; a man with wild hair and wilder eyes; a man whose haggard face even the red glow of the fire could not brighten. ‘What!’ cried Lucius, recognising him at the first glance; ‘have you got no farther than this, Matchi? A sorry result of your boasted cleverness! Where’s the Indian?’ ‘I don’t know,’ the other answered shortly. ‘Dead, perhaps, before this. We quarrelled and parted two days ago. The man’s a knave and a ruffian.’ ‘I don’t believe that,’ said Lucius. ‘He persevered, I suppose; pushed on towards the fort, and you didn’t. That’s the meaning of your quarrel.’ ‘Have it so, if you like,’ returned the stranger with scornful carelessness. Then seeing that Lucius still stood upon the edge of the circle—a bank of snow—looking down at him, he lifted his dark eyes slowly, and returned the gaze. ‘Have things brightened with you since we parted company?’ he asked.